TV preview: Westworld, Pat Kenny, The Apprentice and more

JJ Abrams lets loose a new batch of killer robot cowboys; Pat Kenny is back on the current-affairs beat alongside Colette Fitzpatrick; Alan Sugar returns

Westworld
Tuesday, Sky Atlantic, 9pm

Remember Yul Brynner as a scary android gunslinger, shooting up guests at a futuristic theme park? Well, hold on to your cowboy hats, because Westworld is back in business. The much-anticipated new series, created by Star Trek and Star Wars director JJ Abrams, is based on the original 1973 sci-fi movie written by Michael Crichton, featuring an all-star cast led by Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, James Marsden and Evan Rachel Wood. The premise is pretty much the same: a Wild West theme park peopled by humanoid hosts, where rich guests can live out their noblest hero fantasies – or their darkest outlaw dreams. Glitches soon appear in the system and when the artificial hosts start behaving strangely, it's time for the guests to start thinking about getting out of Dodge.

Kevin McGahern's America
Tuesday, RT
É Two, 9.30pm
America is one crazy place to be right now, so you need a wild and crazy guy to go out there and explore life in the self-styled land of the free and home of the brave. Here, the Republic of Telly presenter put himself in the firing line, fearlessly meeting Trump supporters, gun-rights activists, paranoid patriots and internet sex workers. In the first of three episodes, McGahern joins a group of survivalists in Florida who train him in how to deal with the coming zombie apocalypse.

The Catch
Tuesday, RTÉ2, 10.30pm

Mireille Enos stars as top LA private investigator Alice Vaughan, who is forced to juggle the day-job with a payback mission, when her no-good fiance cons her out of millions and disappears. Cue the kind of preposterous cat-and-mouse game that the best Tuesday-night US drama shows are made of.

Pat Kenny Tonight
Wednesday, TV3, 9.30pm
Pat Kenny is back on our screens in a new current affairs show, Pat Kenny Tonight (Wednesday, TV3, 9.30pm), co-presented by Colette Fitzpatrick, but we'll be tuning in a half an hour earlier to catch Conor Pope's Dodgy Dealers (Wednesday, TV3, 9pm) and watching him expose Ireland's cowboys and rip-off merchants. The Irish Times consumer affairs correspondent confronts companies who could be misleading their customers.

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Bóthar Buck
Thursday, TG4, 10pm

In 1788, famed Dublin adventurer Buck Whaley made a bet against the Duke of Leinster and others that he could travel from his native city to Jerusalem, obtain proof that he had arrived there and return to Dublin within two years. This four-part show charts the progress of Kíla's Rossa Ó Snodaigh as he attempts to follow Buck's path using his diaries as a guide – but in just three weeks.

The Apprentice
Thursday, BBC1, 9pm  

Alan Sugar begins another search for a business partner, challenging a new group of 18 self-obsessed wannabes with dubious business instincts to prove to him why he should give them a £250k investment. Irish interest comes in the form of 37-year-old Dillon St Paul (formerly known as Paul Dillon) from Dublin. The candidates' first task is to sell collectibles to the dealers at Wimbledon car-boot sale.

Kevin Courtney

Kevin Courtney

Kevin Courtney is an Irish Times journalist